This week I show you three design and architecture projects. I took a look behind the scenes at the winter studio of Sarah van Sonsbeeck. She designs ‘mental architecture’ and asked students of the Academy of Architecture to design silence for the city of Amsterdam. The Window Show displays art in the shop windows of the Haarlermmerstraat. And I was at the yearly presentation of landscape artist Bruno Doedens where he showed a preview of his new work.

This week, I spoke to futurologist Jeroen van Mastigt about how technology help us to find true love. And is having virtual sex for example considered as adultery? I went to fashion designer Anne de Grijff to have my first piece of custom clothing made, exciting! In the weekend, I went to the gallery Zone 2 Source in the Glazen Huis in the Amstelpark and spoke to director Alice Smits and artist Antii Tenetz about the latest exhibition about carthograpy. It show how in our current representations of earth we distance ourselves very much from the actual earth.

Last week I was back in Barcelona to experience the election day. I went to Catalan voting stations and talked to the people there. Unfortunately, there was no clear majority so to form a government will be a difficult proces. Also, I celebrated Christmas in Barcelona with a lot of great decorations and a delicious and enormous fish in salt crust. And we worked hard on a video to celebrate 30 years of the John Adams Institute.

Howdie! This time I take you with me all the way to Texas, where I was together with my colleague Maarten for the John Adams Institute in search for conservative speakers. We spoke to congressman Bill Flores, Martin Lindenberg (director McNair Center), Don Hutson of ‘the cowboy solution’ and saw huge dinosaur statues for in your garden. Also, I was very impressed by the Mona Hatoum exhibition in the Menil Collection in Houston.

A glimpse into the many interesting exhibitions and performances that I saw these past two weeks. First, a performance of Faustin Linyekula and Hlengiwe Lushaba at the Prince Claus Awards, and the funny wonderful creations of Jacqueline Lecarme made of…combs. I spoke with Michiel Riedijk of architecture firm Neutelings Riedijk who just won 50.000 euro (the Abe Bonnema Prize) for his design of the cityhall in Deventer and with Tom Frantzen who explained the flexible wooden housing concept Patch 22 to me. In the weekend, we went to Ghent, to the Vitra museum exhibition Hello Robot.

This week I kick off with future perspectives on how the bicycle can change the city at the first Bicycle Architecture Biennale in Amsterdam. Also, I went to the opening of the exhibition ‘The female perspective’ in the always spectacular Castrum Peregrini, the former house of the famous artist Gisèle van Waterschoot van der Gracht. The last part of my week I spent in the always lovely Barcelona, where I saw a special photo exhibition of Susan Meiselas and got to see the just opened Casa Vincens, one of the first works of Barcelona’s beloved architect Gaudí.